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  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption People have been detained in cities across Belarus, according to media reports Protesters and riot police have clashed in Belarus's capital Minsk and other cities, after a state TV exit poll said long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected in Sunday's election. Police used stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannon. A human rights group said one protester was killed and about 120 arrested. Mr Lukashenko won 80% of the vote, according to a preliminary count. But the main opposition leader has refused to recognise the results. "We have already won, because we have overcome our fear, our apathy and our indifference," Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said. The preliminary results give her 9.9% of the vote, but her campaign said she had been polling 70-80% in some areas. Ms Tikhanovskaya entered the election in place of her jailed husband and went on to lead large opposition rallies. Mr Lukashenko, 65, has been in power since 1994. The lead-up to Sunday's poll saw a crackdown on activists and journalists amid the country's biggest opposition demonstrations in years. How did the protests unfold? Demonstrators took to the streets in central Minsk as soon as voting ended and the exit polls were released late on Sunday. Many chanted "Get out" and other anti-government slogans. Riot police fired stun grenades, used batons, and made arrests as they dispersed the demonstrators. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Protesters say President Lukashenko must step down Image copyright Reuters Image caption A number of people were arrested on Sunday evening Early on Monday, Valentin Stefanovic from the Belarusian human rights group Viasna, told Reuters news agency that at least one person had died after being knocked over by a police van and dozens had been injured. He added that at least 120 people had been detained. However, the interior ministry denied that there had been any deaths. Similar protests took place in Brest, Gomel, Grodno and other cities. What's the context? Sometimes referred to as Europe's last dictator, President Lukashenko was first elected in 1994. Image copyright EPA Image caption Mr Lukashenko cast his ballot at a polling station in Minsk In the last vote in 2015, he was declared winner with 83.5% of the vote. There were no serious challengers and election observers reported problems in the counting and tabulation of votes. This year's election is being held amid growing signs of frustration at his leadership. Image copyright EPA Image caption Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has emerged as the wild card of the race The campaign saw the rise of Ms Tikhanovskaya, 37, a former teacher who became a stay-at-home mother until she was thrust into the political spotlight. After her husband was arrested and blocked from registering for the vote, she stepped in to take his place. In the lead-up to the election she told the BBC that people in Belarus did not believe the election would be run fairly. "But I still believe that our president will understand that his time is over. People don't want him any more," she said. President Lukashenko has dismissed Ms Tikhanovskaya as a "poor little girl", manipulated by foreign "puppet masters". Tens of thousands defied an escalating crackdown on the opposition last month to attend a protest in Minsk, the largest such demonstration in a decade. Since the start of the election campaign in May, more than 2,000 people have been detained, according to Human Rights Centre Viasna. On the eve of the vote Ms Tikhanovskaya's team said her campaign manager had been arrested and would not be released until Monday. And on Sunday, as people voted, internet service was "significantly disrupted", according to online monitor NetBlocks. Opposition supporters say this makes it harder for evidence of election fraud to be collected and shared. There were already concerns over a lack of scrutiny because observers were not invited to monitor the election and more than 40% of votes were cast ahead of election day. Was anyone else running? There were three other candidates: Anna Kanopatskaya, a former MP who won a rare seat for the opposition in parliamentary elections in 2016 Sergei Cherechen, the leader of the Social Democrat party Andrei Dmitriyev, the co-chair of the Tell the Truth movement, a campaign group which has been raided by the authorities Two key opposition figures were barred from running and threw their weight behind Ms Tikhanovskaya's campaign. One of them, Valery Tsepkalo, fled Belarus ahead of the contest, fearing arrest. His wife Veronika stayed behind, becoming a key campaigner for Ms Tikhanovskaya. It emerged on Sunday that Ms Tsepkalo had also now left Belarus for Moscow, for "safety" reasons. Anger towards Mr Lukashenko's government has been in part fuelled by the response to coronavirus. The president has downplayed the outbreak, advising citizens to drink vodka and use saunas to fight the disease. Belarus, which has a population of 9.5 million, has reported nearly 70,000 cases and 600 deaths. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 Video The explosion in a warehouse in Beirut ripped through a city known for both a heyday of glamour and a history of civil war. Lebanese people are calling it their 9/11. Starting with the epicentre, here we follow how the blast sent shock waves through Beirut, bringing life to a halt. The Lebanese are famed for their resilience, rebuilding after 15 years of civil war, invasion and foreign occupation. But this disaster comes on top of an unprecedented economic crisis – and the Covid-19 pandemic. Will the country ever be the same again? Narrator: Caroline Hawley Producer: Kate Forbes Edit producer: Megan Fisher Graphics: Terry Saunders 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 ‘I will believe my own eyes,’ says Svetlana Tikhanovskaya after commission says Alexander Lukashenko won landslide The main opposition candidate in Belarus’s election has rejected the official results that gave President Alexander Lukashenko a landslide victory and her team has vowed to stay in the country to campaign for a change of power. “I will believe my own eyes – the majority was for us,” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya told reporters in the capital, Minsk, on Monday, after widespread reports of vote-tampering in Sunday’s election. Tikhanovskaya said she considered herself the election winner not Lukashenko, and described the election as massively rigged. Her aides said the opposition wanted a vote recount at polling stations where there were problems. They also said the opposition wanted to hold talks with authorities about how to bring about a peaceful change of power. The country’s election commission reported on Monday that Lukashenko won 80.23% of the vote while Tikhanovskaya took just 9.9%, despite a popular wave of support for Tikhanovskaya, who had held some of the country’s largest political rallies since the days of the Soviet Union. Similar, preliminary results released on Sunday prompted unprecedented protests in cities across the country, posing the greatest threat to Lukashenko – often referred to as Europe’s last dictator – since he came to power 26 years ago. Play Video 1:06 Belarus election: protesters met with rubber bullets, water cannon and flash grenades – video There were bloody clashes as riot police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, teargas and water cannon to suppress demonstrators. Police detained about 3,000 people, Russia’s RIA news agency cited the Belarusian interior ministry as saying. Further protests are expected on Monday night. Lukashenko’s victory was quickly endorsed by Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, stopped short of congratulating Lukashenko and in a statement called for restraint. Internet connectivity in Belarus has been significantly disrupted. Activists said they had reports dozens of people were injured in the fighting and one person may have been killed after being hit by a police van driving at speed. Belarus’s interior ministry on Monday denied anyone had been killed. The Guardian could not immediately verify the death. Photographs showed protesters with bloodied faces being tended by field medics. In one photograph, a man who had reportedly been hit in the lung with a rubber bullet lies inert, covered in blood. In another, a riot police officer in a balaclava gestures with an expression of fear and frustration at a protester lying unconscious. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Riot police detain a demonstrator in Minsk on Sunday. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images “We’re tired of this rudeness, this nastiness,” said a male protester in Minsk who was wearing a dark T-shirt and a mask, and declined to give his name. “We’re tired of these [exit poll] numbers, which are a spit in the face.” Another man, a plumber, said: “Everyone has come out because we have been cheated. When they gave her [Tikhanovskaya] just 6% [per exit polls], and she had actually won 70%, it was outrageous.” A reporter for the Guardian saw police use water cannon and rubber bullets against protesters. Video and photographs of the clashes also showed police using Czech-manufactured stun grenades. They were reported to have caused several serious injuries: one man was photographed with a chunk of his foot blown off, and another had reportedly lost a finger due to the devices. Analysts said that it was the deepest crisis that Lukashenko had faced in his career. He was already facing unprecedented anger over his handling of the economy and a bungled coronavirus response. Before the elections he jailed opposition candidates and targeted foreign allies, accusing Moscow of sending mercenaries to destabilise the country. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man lies on the ground in front of riot police during a protest in Minsk on Sunday. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images “It’s certainly the biggest protest I’ve ever seen in Belarus since Lukashenko came to power,” said David Marples, a professor at the University of Alberta and an expert on Belarus. “In terms of the elections that Lukashenko’s held, there’s been nothing like it. It seems to me that the whole country really is in favour of change.” Tikhanovskaya was initially a stand-in candidate for her husband, a popular YouTuber jailed earlier in the year. She has grown into an effective campaigner, attracting more than 63,000 people to a rally last month in Minsk, and thousands more in small cities and towns usually dominated by Lukashenko. She has been joined onstage by two other female politicians in a “trio” that has transformed the image of the country’s male-dominated politics. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

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  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 One of Hong Kong’s most strident pro-democracy figures has been arrested and the newspaper he runs searched by police in a stark escalation by authorities enforcing new national security laws brought in by Beijing. The raid on Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy daily paper, and arrest of Jimmy Lai and senior executives, were condemned by activists and journalists, who said they marked “the day press freedom officially died”. Lai, a 71-year-old media tycoon and outspoken funder of the pro-democracy movement, was arrested alongside six others including his son, on suspicion of “collusion with foreign forces” and conspiracy to commit fraud on Monday morning. “The police operation is still ongoing and does not rule out more arrests,” the police force said. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police officers inside Apple Daily headquarters. Photograph: AP Lai’s arrest, while not unexpected, has alarmed the city, which has been on edge after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law outlawing sedition and secessionist activities, and collusion with foreign forces. Lai, who also holds UK citizenship, is the most high-profile figure detained under the law, and if charged with foreign collusion offences would faces potential sentences of three to 10 years in prison – or up to life for an offence “of a grave nature”. In 2019 state media labelled him one of a new Gang of Four conspiring against Beijing. He is already facing several charges over involvement in last year’s pro-democracy protests, and was one of 25 people charged on Friday over attending a Tiananmen Square massacre vigil on 4 June. Hong Kong’s security laws: what are they and why are they so controversial? Read more A report in hawkish Chinese state media mouthpiece The Global Times labelled Lai a “modern-day traitor” and suggested he was unlikely to receive bail and would face “heavy penalties”. Hong Kong journalists have repeatedly warned the security laws would have a chilling affect on media in the territory. Activist and legislator Eddie Chu Hoi-dick accused the Chinese Communist party of wanting to close Apple Daily, and said Lai’s arrest was “the first step of [a] HK media blackout”. Hours after his arrest Lai was marched, handcuffed, through the Apple Daily newsroom as hundreds of police streamed into the building, confiscating documents and casually rifling through papers on journalists’ desks. Live streams of the raid were watched by tens of thousands, and appeared to give the lie to police claims that they would not be targeting any “news materials” in their search. Later, police barred numerous news organisations including Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, and the publicly funding broadcaster RTHK, from attending a press conference about the search. The Hong Kong journalist association head, Chris Yeung, said the raid was “horrendous”. “I think in some third-world countries there has been this kind of press freedom suppression, I just didn’t expect it to be in Hong Kong,” he told media. Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy legislator and a former journalist, said she was more surprised by the raid than the arrest. “This is just so drastic and blatant,” she told the Guardian. “They’re sending a clear warning signal to the Hong Kong media, plus any foreign media stationed here, to behave, to watch out.” Keith Richburg, veteran correspondent and now head of Hong Kong University’s media school, said the raid and arrests of Lai and newspaper executives were outrageous. “I think that’s the day you can say that is the day press freedom officially died, and it didn’t die a natural death. It was killed by Beijing and it was killed by Carrie Lam and Hong Kong police.” Play Video 4:13 Is China pushing Hong Kong further away with its new security law? – video explainer The police operation marked the first time the new security law has been used against media in Hong Kong, which has historically had a high level of press freedom. Last month the New York Times announced it was moving part of its Hong Kong bureau to South Korea, and several outlets have complained of foreign journalist visas not being renewed. On Monday the Standard news website reported the immigration department had established a national security unit to vet “sensitive” visa applications, including from journalists. Chinese and Hong Kong officials have promised the security law would not impinge on the city’s civil freedoms, including its independent press. “Today’s police action upends those assurances,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong said in a statement. Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chair of Hong Kong Watch, said: “To arrest one of the most moderate, peaceful and internationally respected voices for democracy in Hong Kong – on charges of ‘collusion’ with foreign powers – sends the message that no one is safe in Hong Kong unless they stay completely silent and do exactly as Xi Jinping’s brutal regime says.” The arrests prompted some speculation that it was retaliation for US sanctions against senior Hong Kong officials, including the chief executive, Carrie Lam. The accusations of foreign collusion against Lai have been at least partly driven by his meetings with and support from senior US figures including secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. In response to the US sanctions, China’s foreign ministry on Monday said that it would be placing sanctions on 11 US officials including senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Pat Toomey and congressman Chris Smith. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian condemned the US for its “blatant interference” in China’s internal affairs. On Monday afternoon the stock price of Next Digital, Apple Daily’s parent company owned by Lai, had risen more than 300% after some analysts reportedly said they would buy in support of Lai and in protest against his arrest. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 Apple has imported clothes – probably uniforms for staff in stores – from a company facing US sanctions over forced labour at a subsidiary firm in China’s western Xinjiang region, shipping records show. The details come a week after Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, told the US Congress he would not tolerate forced labour or modern-day slavery in the company’s supply chains. An Apple spokesman said the company had confirmed none of its suppliers currently source cotton from Xinjiang, but declined to comment on whether they had done so in the past. The US government in July imposed sanctions on Changji Esquel Textile, a unit of the Hong Kong garment group Esquel, along with 10 other Chinese companies for alleged human rights violations in the Xinjiang region, including forced labour. The sanctions bar the companies from buying US technology and other goods. The US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said they aimed to prevent US products being used in “the Chinese Communist party’s despicable offensive against defenceless Muslim minority populations”. Esquel has denied allegations of abuse. “We absolutely have not, do not, and will never use forced labour anywhere in our company,” it said in a statement, pledging to appeal its inclusion on the list, and adding that an international audit in 2019 confirmed there was no modern-day slavery at the factory. A month before the sanctions were announced, Esquel had sent a shipment of women’s cotton and elastane knit shirts to “Apple Retail stores” in California, the database run by the global shipping information provider Panjiva showed. Those records were identified by the Tech Transparency Project. Esquel supplies many major US clothing companies including Patagonia, Nike and Tommy Hilfiger. But Apple’s relationship with the firm has not received much public scrutiny, even though it stretches back years. Documented in trade publications, and confirmed by shipping databases and Esquel itself, it appears to have mostly focused on uniforms worn by staff in Apple stores. Until recently, Esquel’s website listed Apple as a “major customer”, according to a report published in March by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) into Chinese companies using forced labour in Xinjiang to supply global brands. In 2014 Apple and Esquel agreed to produce more sustainable uniforms using 100 metric tonnes of recycled cotton waste, the industry publication Just Style reported. That same year Esquel shipped more than 50,000 units to Arvato Digital Services, a logistics company that works with Apple, Panjiva records show. Apple was listed on shipping records as the “contact party”. In 2018, a presentation at an industry conference by Esquel’s chief executive, John Cheh, highlighted Apple as a “major customer” of the firm’s Vietnam arm, providing pictures of blue and red staff uniforms produced in its factories. Those units are not on the sanctions list, but the shirts they produced likely included cotton grown in Xinjiang, the region where Chinese authorities’ persecution of mostly Muslim minorities has included forced labour. Apple said in a statement: “Esquel is not a direct supplier to Apple but our suppliers do use cotton from their facilities in Guangzhou and Vietnam. We have confirmed no Apple supplier sources cotton from Xinjiang and there are no plans for future sourcing of cotton from the region.” But the spokesman declined to say where those factories source their raw cotton. Guangzhou is a major Chinese city where there is no cotton farming, and Esquel’s public documents do not refer to any cotton farming in Vietnam. The garment company prides itself on “vertical integration”, producing much of the cotton used in its garments itself; the same presentation by Cheh listed factories across Asia, and offices around the world – but only Xinjiang as a site for “cotton farming, ginning and spinning”. Further notes listed five locations where the firm operated inside Xinjiang. One was Changji, the location of the sanctioned subsidiary. Another was Kashgar, where for more than two decades Esquel had a joint venture with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary government organisation that was also sanctioned by the US government in July, over its alleged role in the perpetration of abuses. Esquel sold its stake in the Xinjiang White Field Cotton Farming company in April, three months before XPCC was sanctioned. It has not said how it will replace the particular type of high-quality cotton (extra-long staple cotton) that the joint venture provided. The XPCC produces about one-third of China’s cotton. James Millward, professor of history at Georgetown University in Washington DC and the author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, said the entire region’s economy had been contaminated by Chinese communist party policies, with at least 1 million people held in internment camps, many pushed into forced labour. “They’ve tainted supply chains, have tainted the very idea of Xinjiang,” he said. “It is such a deeply entrenched, and broadly enmeshed system of oppression they have created, that has involved hundreds of companies in China and outside of China.” Even if the companies’ own factories can be certified free of forced labour, they are often working with – or with authorisation from – the local governments managing the abuse. “They’re doing business with the province, they’re doing business with local administrations, they’re doing business with the XPCC, all of which are running concentration camps and all of which are involved in moving people in concentration camps into one kind of coerced or involuntary labor or another,” he said. Apple came under the spotlight over alleged use of forced labour by a supplier when the original sanctions list came out because of its relationship with the tech firm Nanchang O-Film Tech, which makes cameras for some iPhones. Cook visited a company factory in southern China in 2017, according to the ASPI report. Testifying to Congress last week, Cook described forced labour as “abhorrent”. “We wouldn’t tolerate it [slave labour]. We would terminate a supplier relationship if it was found,” he said, adding that he would be keen to work on legislation to ban forced labour. Millward said foreign companies would need to “ramp up due diligence” to keep forced labour out of their supply chains, particularly in the garment industry. “The way corporates have been thinking about it generally is, ‘Well, I don’t have any factories in Xinjiang, so I cannot be involved’,” but that is no longer enough. “You have to see if any of the companies you’re dealing with are themselves dealing with Xinjiang. And maybe take it, you know, two or three steps removed because that’s how particularly the textile industry is. You go from from fibre to filament to fabric to clothing, and it’s very hard to trace all of that all along the way.” 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 Dawn Butler, the Labour MP and former shadow equalities minister, has accused the police of being institutionally racist after she and a friend were stopped while driving to Sunday lunch. Butler, a strong critic of police stop-and-search tactics, said the car was being driven by her male friend, who like Butler is black, when two police cars pulled it over in Hackney, east London. Officers said the vehicle was registered in North Yorkshire. After taking the BMW’s keys and checking the registration, the officers admitted there had been a mistake and apologised, Butler told the Guardian. The Metropolitan police later said in a statement that an officer had initially entered the registration number wrongly into a computer system, and that neither the MP nor her friend were searched. It is the third time Butler has been stopped by police as an MP, she said, while her friend had been stopped regularly. The incident places renewed focus on an area of policing, particularly in London, that critics regularly say is racist. Black and minority ethnic people are stopped and searched, and there are concerns this has been exacerbated by the coronavirus lockdown. It emerged last month that young black men were stopped and searched by police more than 20,000 times in London during the lockdown, the equivalent of more than a quarter of all black 15- to 24-year-olds in the capital. Across England as a whole there were four stop and searches for every 1,000 white people and 38 for every 1,000 black people in 2018-19. Butler said she had been happy with the attitude of the officer who dealt with the registration, and would not have complained publicly were it not for the approach of two other police involved. One of them asked Butler where she lived and was going, and said the pair had been stopped because “there’s people who have been coming into the area”, without explaining what this meant, the MP said. Another officer, a woman, had “inflamed the situation” by saying tinted rear windows on the car could be illegal, she added. The law about tinting on windows applies only to the windscreen and front windows. “I had no intention of speaking about this until the officers became very obnoxious,” said Butler, who made a video recording of the incident on her phone. “I just felt that if I don’t use my platform to talk about this, I’m doing a disservice to everyone who gets wrongly stopped and searched, and all the black people who are constantly unjustly profiled.” In the video, Butler can be heard telling the officers: “It is really quite irritating. It’s like you cannot drive around and enjoy a Sunday afternoon whilst black because you’re going to be stopped by police.” One of the officers tells her: “I appreciate everything you say and I do apologise for wasting your time.” The MP said she and her friend had been heading to meet people socially: “We were just going out to have a nice lunch. My plans were basically ruined. It’s a sunny Sunday, and you don’t get many of those. “I’ve been stopped while driving twice as an MP. My friend has experienced it a number of times. That’s why his attitude was just like, ‘Here, have my driving licence. Here we go again.’” The Brent Central MP said she was puzzled that the police computer could wrongly say her friend’s car was registered outside London, and that this was sufficient reason to stop them regardless. “That’s really interesting, because I’m doing a lot of work with the police at the moment,” she said. “It’s really important that we focus on whether the system is institutionally racist. It needs to change. It’s a bogus reason for stopping someone.” The Met police statement said officers stopped a car in Hackney at about midday on Sunday: “Prior to stopping the vehicle, an officer incorrectly entered the registration into a police computer which identified the car as registered to an address in Yorkshire. “Upon stopping the vehicle and speaking with the driver, it quickly became apparent that the registration had been entered incorrectly and was registered to the driver in London. Once the mistake was realised the officer sought to explain this to the occupants; they were then allowed on their way. No searches were carried out on any individuals. “One of the occupants has since been contacted by a senior officer and they have discussed the stop, subsequent interaction as well as feedback regarding the stop. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter further with the occupants if they wish to do so.” The area commander for north-west London, chief superintendent Roy Smith, said he had spoken to Butler. He tweeted: “She has given me a very balanced account of the incident. She was positive about one officer and gave feedback on others and the stop. We are listening to those concerns and Dawn is quite entitled to raise them.” Butler revealed in July that she had closed her constituency office over fears about the safety of her staff. She had been to the police the previous month over threats following her support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In an interview with the Guardian last week, Butler called for an end to stop-and-search tactics by police, saying the approach was racist. “It does not work, or rather, it works the way it’s designed to work. It is designed to be discriminatory,” she said. “The fact is, where a police officer can stop a person of colour driving a car, saying, ‘We smelled drugs coming from your car; that’s why we stopped you’, and then, when they search the car, there are no drugs, you have to ask yourself: what were they smelling?” Butler, 50, who served as a junior minister under Gordon Brown and was shadow women and equalities minister for Jeremy Corbyn for nearly three years, stood to be the party’s deputy leader this year but was eliminated in the first round of voting. • This article was amended on 10 August 2020 to clarify a sentence that suggested Butler was driving the car. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 As many as a third of UK employers expect to cut jobs by October, according to a survey that suggests that the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate in the coming weeks. About 33% of more than 2,000 companies, charities and public sector bodies in the poll said they expected to make redundancies in the third quarter of 2020, according to figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and Adecco Group, a staffing company. The poll suggests the UK is likely to experience a wave of job losses across the economy as the government starts to withdraw the coronavirus job retention scheme. The scheme has paid 80% of furloughed workers’ wages up to £2,500 per month, preventing many job losses. However, employers have this month been forced to start contributing towards the wage bill, and the scheme is scheduled to close at the end of October, despite some companies still being unable to open. Gerwyn Davies, the CIPD’s senior labour market adviser, said: “Until now, redundancies have been low – no doubt due to the job retention scheme – but we expect to see more redundancies come through this autumn, especially in the private sector, once the scheme closes.” The survey found some evidence of increased confidence in hiring workers, as the easing of the lockdown made recruitment less difficult. However, the CIPD said it was unlikely to make up for the wave of redundancies. Davies added that a pay squeeze was likely for workers as firms try to avoid cutting jobs where possible. Job losses have already hit hundreds of thousands of British workers across the economy, from factory workers to shop assistants and flight attendants in the stricken aviation sector. Restaurants and casual dining have also been under particular pressure, with the number of jobs lost across the sector already nearly double the amount shed during the whole of 2019, according to new data from the Centre for Retail Research. Exactly 22,039 jobs were lost across large restaurant groups and independent operators such as Carluccio, Bella Italia, Café Rouge, Bistrot Pierre and Byron, a rise of 95% on the 11,280 jobs lost during 2019. The grim economic outlook has affected workers across the country, prompting concerns over the long-term job prospects for younger workers as well as the resilience of many older workers who do not have significant savings built up. Almost 200,000 over-50s have dropped out of the workforce since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, according to analysis of government data that suggests many older people may have given up entirely on finding work. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk About 14.1m workers over the age of 50 were classed as economically inactive between March and May 2020, compared with 13.9m between December and February, said Rest Less, a jobs site for older workers. Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, said he expected the older generation to be permanently scarred by the pandemic. “In the wake of the toughest job market in decades, there has been a significant rise in the number of workers over 50 who have lost hope in finding a job and feel forced into an early retirement that many simply cannot afford,” he said. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 The outsourcing firm Capita is planning to hire 900 additional staff to manage London’s congestion charge and low emission zones after it won a five-year extension to its existing contracts with Transport for London (TfL). The deal is worth £355m to the company, which also manages the BBC licence fee, and includes work related to London’s ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ), which is scheduled to be expanded in October 2021. The measures, along with the congestion charge, are designed to improve air quality by keeping the most polluting vehicles out of central London. The expanded zone, an area bounded by the north and south circular roads, is many times larger than the area covered by the congestion charge and is monitored by a network of cameras. Drivers of vehicles including motorbikes will be charged £12.50 every day apart from Christmas Day for driving in the zone, if they do not meet the tighter exhaust emission standards. This payment is in addition to the £15 congestion charge payable every day for those driving in central London between 7am and 10pm. Motorbikes are exempt from the congestion charge. Capita currently processes an average of 1.5m roadside images each day as part of managing the zones and will migrate its existing technology to the cloud when it starts handling the expanded ULEZ. Capita said the majority of its new hires would be allowed to work remotely and encouraged to work from home. Jon Lewis, Capita’s chief executive officer, said the company would work with TfL to roll out schemes to reduce the effects of air pollution and make roads safer. Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk “These new contracts will see us build on our existing partnership, which has already seen us launch ULEZ on time and on budget, and will draw on our track record of transformation and digitally enabled services, as well as adding value for our shareholders,” Lewis said. TfL has reported that the existing ultra-low emissions zone in central London has already led to a 44% drop in roadside levels of the harmful gas nitrogen dioxide, NO 2 , and that 79% of vehicles entering the area were meeting its emission standards. Capita, which is one of the major providers of outsourced services to the UK government, announced in June it would cut at least 200 jobs because of financial difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-10 

 The government has pledged to tackle safety fears about cycling after an official study revealed that two-thirds of people were worried about the dangers of riding on the roads. Figures from the government’s National Travel Attitudes Study showed 66% of adults in England said it was “dangerous for me to cycle on the roads”, up from 61% a year before and the highest figure for more than a decade. In an interview with the Guardian, Chris Heaton-Harris, the transport minister whose remit covers cycling, said plans for cycling and walking, spearheaded by Boris Johnson and announced last month, were intended to change this. As part of the £2bn commitment, thousands of miles of protected bike lanes, as well as a regulator to stop councils building substandard cycling and walking infrastructure, will be introduced. There are also plans to allow residents to block through-traffic from residential streets. Asked about people’s safety worries, Heaton-Harris said: “I know from talking to people, and looking at my very active cycling social media response, that dedicated infrastructure is essential to make people feel safe. “One of the big parts of this investment is to try and make the streets safer for people to cycle on. I tend to believe that in cycling, it’s very much Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams territory: if you build it, they will come.” The survey was conducted in January and February this year, before large number of people began riding bikes during the coronavirus lockdown. This showed the latent demand for cycling, Heaton-Harris said: “When people feel safe, they cycle.” Annual figures on cycling numbers, released at the same time as the safety survey, also showed that, at least pre-lockdown, they have barely increased in years, with the average number of bike trips per adult in England during 2019 being 17, as against 16 in 2015. Heaton-Harris said he was confident that the new efforts would begin a long-term change towards more cycling, and consistent government support for this. “I’d like to think with this investment over the next four or five years, we can actually demonstrate and have the data to prove that when we do the things we’re talking about, we will be able to demonstrate that that has led to way more people cycling,” he said. “We can also show we are a healthier nation, that air quality has gone up and air pollution goes down, all of these big things lots of people have been campaigning for, are delivered by change in the modal shift towards cycling and walking, And then I think it’ll be a no-brainer for future governments.” The change would, Heaton-Harris argued, play a key role in tackling health inequalities exposed by Covid-19, with studies showing obesity and inactive lifestyles are among the factors that can exacerbate its impact. One element of the new cycling plans, the idea of helping GPs to prescribe cycling as a health measure for some patients, will be targeted at more deprived communities, which have faced particular problems from coronavirus. This would also include funding for councils in these areas for changes such as separated bike lanes, low-traffic neighbourhoods and secure cycle parking, Heaton-Harris said. “When I was first elected as an MP in 2010, I was lucky to go on the public accounts committee and the first report we did was about the difference in health outcomes up and down the country. It was shocking, eye-opening for me as a new member of parliament. “I’m absolutely convinced that if this pilot works [GPs prescribing cycling in some areas], and I expect it to, and it’s targeted in the correct places with corrective interventions, we can make people a lot healthier. And all the evidence suggests that makes them less prone to Covid as well.”